After 6pm tomorrow night, I will either be “caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air” (1Thess 4:17), or so busy dealing with the aftermath of The Global Earthquake that will shake the world, that I will not have time for blogging. And since I have decided not to follow the example of some websites, like Judgement Day 2011, where they have prepared blog posts to run after the big event, I guess this is goodbye.
Wait…If these earthquakes are going to be so devastating, will the internet even work after Saturday evening? Oh well, one way or another I probably won’t care. Nor will you.
And so, as the saints ascend heaven’s stairway and leave the earth in its distress and disarray, there is only one thing left to say…
Come on, children
You’re acting like children
Every generation
Thinks it’s the end of the world
– Wilco, “You Never Know”
I had a spiritual awakening as a teenager in a time when prophetic expectations were high. Israel was in her land and engaged in violent confrontations with her antagonistic neighbors. Issues regarding Arab oil and other tensions in the Middle East were becoming more intense. Life in the United States itself was in turmoil. Ongoing civil rights struggles, the Vietnam war, the youth culture of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll, amazing technological achievements such as the Apollo space program, the continuing Cold War, and political intrigue in the White House — all these things and more had believers feeling certain that we were in the last days and that Jesus must certainly be returning soon. Prophetic teachers like Hal Lindsey were having a field day and selling lots and lots of books. Youth groups and outreach events often featured films like A Thief in the Night.
In those days I started following Jesus in a fresh way with my New Scofield Bible in hand, prophetic teaching a major part of the Bible studies I attended and the churches where I worshiped. I wasn’t able to spell “dispensationalism,” but my friends and I believed Jesus was coming back. We sang Larry Norman’s “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” with real feeling.
Howdy all. This is your friendly publisher—the abbot of the iMonastery, if you will—paying you a visit to catch you up on a few things here at the Internet Monk. Some of you may be relatively new visitors to our site, while others have been here for many years. All are welcome, especially those who say nice things about us.
This site was begun by Michael Spencer more than eleven years ago. Michael passed away in April of 2010 (you can read his story here). Before his passing, Michael and his wife Denise asked me to take over the site, with Chaplain Mike serving as editorial director and the main contributor. We were very honored and humbled to try to fill Michael’s shoes. And then we quickly realized we couldn’t fill his shoes, so we decided to just wear our own. Since that time, we have added more writers and completed a major redesign of the site. But our focus remains presenting a Jesus-shaped spirituality. We strive to be guides in the post-Evangelical wilderness.
I’d like to answer some questions that you would ask if you had the chance. Being the publisher allows me the opportunity to both ask and answer the questions. So sit back, relax, and let me handle all of the heavy lifting.
I live in a city where changing churches is an art form. Those who have been in their same church for ten or more years are as rare as an Oklahoman who doesn’t like football (which is the unofficial state religion). They are as rare as an Arkansan with a full set of teeth. When I meet someone I haven’t seen in, oh, say, six months or more, and they ask, “Are you still going to ____?”, and I say Yes I am, they’re shocked. Not because it is a bad church, and not because I am a serial church-hopper. But because so many others in Tulsa are.
I have been at my church for more than twelve years now, ever since I moved back to Tulsa from southwest Ohio in 1998. It’s not a perfect church. (How could it be with me in attendance?) It’s not a large church by Tulsa standards. We have maybe 650 who come for one of two Sunday morning services, and that includes kids of all ages. The largest church in Tulsa has that many parking attendants. My church is my family. They know me and still accept me. As far as I’m concerned I’ll make this my home for as long as I live in Tulsa.
(Full disclosure time: iMonk writers Adam Palmer and Joe Spann also attend this church with me. But they usually don’t sit with me—I think it has to do with the fact that I may be the worst singer in the universe.)
Yet I am a rarity among churchgoers in this part of our land. Most pastors will tell you it is common to have a person or family stay for an average of only two years. What happens to cause people to change churches after such a relatively short period of time?
Every once in awhile, I receive a comment from a member of our Internet Monk community that I can’t get out of my mind. It strikes home with me as so true and so well put, that it becomes a part of me. I tell others about it. I go back and read it over and over again. I may even piggy-back on it and write a follow-up post.
Sometimes such comments are spectacular examples of Biblical insight, logical reasoning, imaginative writing. At others times, they are simple expressions of humanity and truth. My favorite comment from recent days falls into the second category.
Perhaps I love this comment because it rings true personally for me and speaks to the place I find myself in my life and faith journey. I can’t deny that. But I also think these words express something genuine that today’s Christian communities need to hear. If you’ve been following IM, you will know that I think there is entirely too much hype in contemporary evangelicalism. There is constant sense of trying to get ourselves revved up and “radical.” At this point in my life, frankly, I’m tired of religious enthusiasm and the noise that attends it. Evangelicalism in particular has this large segment that has been captured by the ethos of youth culture, marketing culture, and leaders who are more promoters than servants.
That’s why I love Ken’s comment. His words give me space to breathe, a calm place where I can think and be quiet. Here is what he said:
I have wondered for awhile if we expect too much.
A few years after college some good friends of ours decided to leave evangelicalism to go back to the mainline church. I remember a discussion I had with him. “How can you go to this dry bones place where you won’t hear good teaching and sermons?” was my complaint.
He gently tried to explain to me that he was going to worship God. He never managed to get into my head that church was not about the pastor. He did not have grandiose expectations of his priest. I go to worship.
It was not to fix him, or hear the latest and greatest, or to become a super christian.
I have since started to attend a more mainline church and I understand. It is not about my priest, or that we are the best church in town, on God’s cutting edge. Just a Christian community that gathers.
Thank you, Ken, for this quiet reminder. I, for one, don’t need a place on the “cutting edge.” I need a sanctuary, a community, a place where I can meet God, love my neighbors, learn to do what is right, practice kindness, and walk humbly with my God.
I know what some will say. But how will we ever reach the world with that attitude? Doesn’t that encourage complacence and quietism?
And I respond. I know of no plant that is better off without strong, deep roots, roots that go down into fertile, quiet places where they receive constant nourishment and where they grow strong and stable. And I don’t know of any plants that have such roots that are not bearing fruit in due season and accomplishing more good through quiet, unassuming service in their given vocations than those who talk all the time about changing the world and run around in a spirit of frenetic activism.
Here’s a good question from a reader that will be fun for me to answer and I hope will prompt some good discussion. I’m eager to hear your responses.
Today’s Question: Tell us about your use of the English Bible. Likes, loves, etc. It’ll generate some comments to be sure. So the question is, “What are your favorite English Bible translations?”
Friend,
Thanks for your question. I enjoy talking about the Bible almost as much as I enjoy studying it and teaching it. One of my passions as a pastor was to help people study the Word for themselves. A key part of that was helping them understand the differences between Bible versions, and to explain why I chose the translations I used.
Let me tell you about my journey. When I was a child, I attended United Methodist churches, so the Bible I heard in worship and Sunday School, and which I was given at confirmation was the Revised Standard Version. Since I was not much of a Bible reader or student at that time in my life, it shows little wear, and I never did become attached to that translation.
At the time of my spiritual awakening in the early 1970’s, I fell in love with the Good News Translation. I had one of those “Good News for Modern Man” paperback New Testaments and I devoured it with delight. Its wonderfully simple, evocative line drawings by Annie Vallotton complemented the GNT’s clear renderings of Jesus’ message. There was and is something fresh and immediate about its style, and I love reading it to this day. It takes me back to those “honeymoon” days of my first love with the Lord when he called me to follow him.
After John had been put in prison, Jesus went to Galilee and preached the Good News from God. The right time has come, he said, and the Kingdom of God is near! Turn away from your sins and believe the Good News!
As Jesus walked along the shore of Lake Galilee, he saw two fishermen, Simon and his brother Andrew, catching fish with a net. Jesus said to them, Come with me, and I will teach you to catch people. At once they left their nets and went with him.
He went a little farther on and saw two other brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebedee. They were in their boat getting their nets ready. As soon as Jesus saw them, he called them; they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and went with Jesus.
• Mark 1:14-20, GNT
It was at that point that I began studying the Bible.
In an exclusive interview with The Guardian, cosmologist Stephen Hawking was as blunt and clear as he could be about his views on life beyond this life. “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”
Hawking’s comments came in response to questions posed by the Guardian in advance of a lecture at the Google Zeitgeist meeting in London, in which he will address the question, “Why are we here?” In answer to that query, the renowned scientist asserted, “Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.”
Last year, in response to Hawking’s book, The Grand Design, in which he said that science excludes the possibility of God, Rabbi Lord Sacks answered Hawking by remarking that the author had committed a fundamental fallacy in his thinking. “There is a difference between science and religion. Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. …there is more to wisdom than science. It cannot tell us why we are here or how we should live. Science masquerading as religion is as unseemly as religion masquerading as science.”
Hawking’s pronouncements represent the other end of the spectrum from the fundamentalism of the creationists. This is fundamentalist scientism. It shows that even a man as brilliant as Stephen Hawking can have a stunted imagination, limited to what the human mind can discover or explain. Furthermore, it seems as though this “objective” scientist has also allowed a bit of emotional prejudice to color his words, demeaning believers as children who fear the darkness, who need daddy to calm them with night-night tales.
I, for one, do not think the Biblical story that reaches its pinnacle in Jesus the Messiah is a fairy tale. I would argue that the historical evidence for his resurrection can lead one to the reasonable conclusion that what the early Christians said happened on Easter Sunday and for forty days following really occurred. Faith is a matter of mind, as well as heart and soul.
It is a tragedy that people on both sides of this debate cannot find it in their hearts, minds, and imaginations to make room for each other. But we are reminded again today that it is not just the religious fundamentalists that are making that impossible in our day.
NOTE: Steven Hawking image by Chloe Ashton. Visit the website HERE.
After this morning’s profound and personal inquiry, this afternoon I thought I’d tackle a shorter question. In some senses, it’s not any easier. I have found as a chaplain that it is sometimes easier to help people face death than it is to help them sort out life. It can get pretty complicated.
Today’s Question:
A friend in ministry asks,
How do you deal with and interact with people who still hold the views that you used to hold, especially those who take the “my way or the highway†position?
Dear Friend,
Well, since I have been through several different changes in my life concerning “views I used to hold,” I could answer that in a variety of ways. But I’m assuming you are writing in the context of what you read on Internet Monk, so I am interpreting your question in terms of my former journey through non-denominational evangelical church life.
By and large, let me say first of all that my exodus from evangelicalism as a system of practicing the faith had little to do with the people I’ve known in our churches. I had mostly good relationships with parishioners and coworkers. As for my part, I was never doctrinaire as a pastor, leading to the kinds of “my way or the highway” schisms you ask about. I always thought it was more about the people and discovering with them what the Bible teaches than it was me pronouncing settled law from the pulpit or lectern. Oh yes, I went through my “pronouncement” phases, but fortunately the wise ones simply waited me out until I saw more light.
First of all, thank you for your stimulating questions. I have received several, enough to keep us busy for a few weeks here. I will try to post an “Ask Chaplain Mike” post at least 2 or 3 times a week for the foreseeable future.
As a reminder of how to get in on this and some information about the concept:
Use the link at the top right of the page that says, “Write Chaplain Mike” to send me an email.
Put “Ask Chaplain Mike” in the subject line of your email.
Ask your question. Out of bounds subjects include anything that requires me to reveal personal information about family or friends. Try to keep your question simple enough so that I can answer it adequately in a post.
I am most definitely not an “answer man.” I am doing this primarily to allow our readers some input as to the content of Internet Monk.
Today, I will answer a very personal question submitted by a regular reader that applies to my work as a hospice chaplain.
“When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” (John 10:4, NASB)
This morning’s poem was a meditation on the idea (the reality!) that the Shepherd goes before us into each day and prepares the way. He leads us out into our daily life and work, and it is ours to hear his voice and follow.
The passage below is one of the seminal texts that made me aware of this as a minister. Its words are specifically directed to those in pastoral work, but its concepts apply to us all. Especially in the work I do now, where I enter people’s homes and hospital rooms several times a day, never quite knowing what I will face or what ministry will be needed, I find myself falling back on these truths time and time again.
I hope it encourages you as we prepare to walk into the week ahead.
In running the church, I seize the initiative. I take charge. I take responsibility for motivation and recruitment, for showing the way, for getting things started. If I don’t things drift. I am aware of the tendency to apathy, the human susceptibility to indolence, and I use my leadership position to counter it.
By contrast, the cure of souls is a cultivated awareness that God has already seized the initiative. The traditional doctrine defining this truth is prevenience: God everywhere and always seizing the initiative. He gets things going. He had and continues to have the first word. Prevenience is the conviction that God has been working diligently, redemptively, and strategically before I appeared on the scene, before I was aware there was something here for me to do.
The cure of souls is not indifferent to the realities of human lethargy, naive about congregational recalcitrance, or inattentive to neurotic cussedness. But there is a disciplined, determined conviction that everything (and I mean, precisely, everything) we do is a response to God’s first work, his initiating act. We learn to be attentive to the divine action already in process so that the previously unheard word of God is heard, the previously unattended act of God is noticed.
Running-the-church questions are: What do we do? How can we get things going again?
Cure-of-souls questions are: What has God been doing here? What traces of grace can I discern in this life? What history of love can I read in this group? What has God set in motion that I can get in on?
We misunderstand and distort reality when we take ourselves as the starting point and our present situation as the basic datum. Instead of confronting the bogged-down human condition and taking charge of changing it with no time wasted, we look at divine prevenience and discern how we can get in on it at the right time, in the right way.
The cure of souls takes time to read the minutes of the previous meeting, a meeting more likely than not at which I was not present. When I engage in conversation, meet with a committee, or visit a home, I am coming in on something that has already been in process for a long time. God has been and is the central reality in that process. The biblical conviction is that God is “long beforehand with my soul.” God has already taken the initiative. Like one who walks in late to a meeting, I am entering a complex situation in which God has already said decisive words and acted in decisive ways. My work is not necessarily to announce that but to discover what he is doing and live appropriately with it.
, p. 69f
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